


blue is the colour

by thisbluespirit



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, The Shadow of the Tower
Genre: 500 prompts, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 13:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16347824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: Elizabeth of York in shades of blue across the years.





	blue is the colour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AllegoriesInMediasRes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/gifts).



> Written For allegoriesinmediares in the [500 Prompts Meme](http://lost-spook.dreamwidth.org/291842.html): 264 – beneath the blue – Henry VII/Elizabeth of York &/ Margaret Beaufort.

**i. hands**

It’s December, and it’s cold. Elizabeth pulls her clothes in closer as she walks along the corridors of Lady Margaret’s house, taking her exercise. It’s winter at Coldharbour, which is an appropriate enough thought to make her smile, but not for long. She tries to think of the king, of Henry. She’s hopeful of him, perhaps even more than hopeful if she confesses the truth. Still, here, for all the walls around her, she feels the pervasive icy mist without and the chill of loss within.

She hears the stiff rustle of skirts behind her and purposeful footsteps that can only mean one thing: she has been found by the Lady Margaret again.

“Lady Elizabeth,” says Margaret as Elizabeth turns, unbending; drawing herself up as she refuses to allow Margaret seniority over her.

Margaret fails to acknowledge her pride or her position, as ever. She takes Elizabeth’s hands, and says, “You are too cold, my dear! I will not – must not – permit it – come into the hall where there is a fire.”

“I needed to walk,” says Elizabeth, searching for excuses to pull away, before she surrenders with a tremulous laugh. She _is_ cold, and what is the use in insisting on remaining here comfortless for the sake of dignity? 

Margaret embraces her before leading her back to the hall. “I warn you, I mean to take the best care of you.” She gives Elizabeth a sidelong, satisfied look that might earlier have irritated the princess, but now amuses her. “I know someone else who wishes me to do so.”

Perhaps it is all political, but Elizabeth lets go of her frozen pride, and accepts the kindness. How true it is, she will find out later, but in all this sea of change, it is something to hold onto. Lady Margaret is what she ever was.

“Thank you, my lady,” Elizabeth says, falling into step alongside her soon-to-be mother-in-law. “You are very good.”

“No, no,” says Margaret, much as her son had. “Merely doing what ought to be done – what I have been asked to do.”

Elizabeth looks down and hides her smile.

 

**ii. eyes**

She’d thought before, in the hall at Westminster, in the December days at Coldharbour, that his eyes were grey, her husband’s, but now, waking in the sunlit strangeness of this first morning of marriage to find him watching her, she thinks that they are blue.

He brushes her cheek with his fingers and says, with a faint lift of amusement in his voice, “So you slept well, madam? I began to wonder if you would not wake.”

Elizabeth laughs. She laughed, yesterday, at the wedding. It was so strange: to be where she never imagined herself – Queen of England, and how! – a little fearful of the future, but also happy, more so than anyone else in the room (save perhaps the Lady Margaret). Here, she feels happier still, and is that not even stranger?

“Elizabeth,” he says, tilting his head to one side, as if the simplest answer to the riddle of herself is one he cannot make out. “Bess.” And for a moment, he sounds almost unsure of himself, this man who has told her that he does everything with great care. (No stumbling into folly, no wild leaps into joy; so he said.)

She catches her breath, because how can duty turn out to be such pleasure? All the cloth of gold and promises, feasting and dancing, all of that can fall away so fast; a bauble that drops out of one’s hand and shatters.

“Bess,” he says again, and she lets out that breath, because this at least is plain and real, and she’s comforted at last by kisses and caresses.

She’s almost sure his eyes are blue.

 

**iii. Blood**

Elizabeth’s blood is royal, and she grows less certain every day how she feels about this. She loves her family (what is left of it), and it’s as the daughter of another king that she made this marriage. (She is the only true heir to the kingdom and, silently, in her own heart and mind, she gifted that to Henry.)

But it’s her cousin of Lincoln who plots against them now; even her mother is shut away. Her other cousin, the young Earl of Warwick, is in the Tower – and Lincoln would cast aside Warwick as surely as he would Henry, as he would her son Arthur.

It’s easiest to think in terms of duty: there, as a woman, her first loyalty is to her husband, and then to her child. She can’t help the pang of guilt, for so go her affections also. Not that it’s Lincoln she will grieve for – Lincoln wants the power and would kill all of them to get the throne – but his actions endanger the rest. Her mother, her brother, poor, simple Warwick.

But first and most immediately, he threatens the king, and Elizabeth can only wait here at Kenilworth for news.

Lady Margaret is with her. She will not allow any whisper of the possibility that Henry might fail when he meets the rebels to be spoken in her hearing, and Elizabeth puts aside the rest and takes heart from Margaret.

“There is still no word?” Elizabeth asks, approaching her mother-in-law.

Lady Margaret turns and Elizabeth sees her own relief mirrored in her eyes as they meet. Today, they both understand each other very well.

“Not yet,” said Lady Margaret, but she raises her head; her body stiffens slightly. “Soon, I am sure.”

Elizabeth nods, and finds herself wanting to laugh for the first time that day. She puts out a hand to Margaret’s arm. 

“He will win,” she says, and she’s sure of it, taking equal comfort to that she gives. After all, her cousin of Lincoln has no such heart that beats for him, only his own ambition, and what Lady Margaret’s prayers have accomplished already, they will again. Henry will win.

 

**iv. treasure**

Lady Margaret is busy issuing orders as to the matter of Elizabeth’s confinement: let there be one particular cloth, of this length and thickness hanging over the windows here; another such there, down to the last detail. The first time it irritated Elizabeth. What interference, what presumption! But also, she was surprised to find, the care she had promised her.

Now it amuses her, for she sees the affection it conveys. Not even being queen can save childbirth from being an ordeal, and Margaret battles with her through that peril and pain. In this field, they are allies, Elizabeth has learned that now.

“It must be done right,” Lady Margaret insists when she catches Elizabeth’s smile. “You must take every care of yourself and of the child. You are _not_ as strong as I would like.”

Elizabeth kisses Lady Margaret on the cheek. “You need not fear. I shall. I know my duty.”

Margaret catches at Elizabeth’s hand in return, squeezing it tightly, and then she talks her through the colour of the curtains once more.

 

On the birth of their child, another son, Henry gives Elizabeth one of his gifts in thanks. He worries even more than Margaret over Elizabeth’s confinements. He talks of ceremonies and thanksgivings, and then turns. “You are quiet, madam,” he says, watching her sharply. “You are not yet well?”

“A little tired, my lord,” she said, “but only that. I am well. I will be well.”

He presses the stone into her hands and kisses them.

She understands. Sometimes he and his mother are very alike. They give their love in cloth and orders and honour and jewels. Elizabeth keeps Henry’s hand in hers, and thinks of the look on his face when she presented him with his daughter; these are her particular treasures.

 

**v. ink**

Elizabeth composes letters to send over the sea, and pours out her heart in dark blue ink. It is the first time she and Henry have been parted for this length of time. She must be careful with her words, but lets him know that she longs to see him return, with the war put behind them.

They say in mockery that it’s her letters that bring him home, but she knows that he only ever does what he means to, and so, if he is home and the war is over, that is what he must have intended.

She wonders, when she sees him, if she might for once have been wrong, as he makes no attempt to conceal his pleasure at seeing her again, the smile that lightens his narrow face, and the way he grasps her hands too tightly.

“I’ll no more wars,” he says later, when they are as private as they will ever be. He laughs. “They cost too much in any case.”

The rest of the country would admire him more if he did ride into battle more often, if he shattered Scotland and took back half of France, making its king pay in blood and not in coin. Perhaps she would have done so too, once, but not any more. She’s learned to follow his reasoning, the opportunities he sees in peace, the protection that comes from building up the treasury. Others don’t understand; his soldiers grumble at peace without glory. Perhaps they’ll look for battle elsewhere, following another pretender. _Fools_ , Elizabeth thinks.

Henry pulls in nearer. “I was glad of your letters,” he murmurs into her ear, as he touches her hair, loose only for him. 

“I meant them,” she says, answering the unspoken questions. She knows his doubts painfully well by now. “Every word.”

She’s never sure if he believes her.

 

**vi. Mourning**

It’s an odd truth, but this most painful loss – Arthur’s death – has left them a consoling gift in its wake. They know each other now, in ways they did not before, and that Elizabeth adds to the list of things they must take joy in while they may. They have each other, Prince Henry, their two dear daughters, and his Lady Mother, and Elizabeth adds to that now the widowed young Princess Catherine she is determined to mother. 

When they are in private, Henry pulls her in close with new ease. It seems he has at last solved the riddle that she is and found it was no great mystery after all. It’s not only that she comforts him in his sorrow; he’s seen now, at her sharpest point of grief, that it’s not her ladies, or even her sisters she needs, it’s him. She unravels in his arms and leaves him no more room for doubt.

The future is uncertain again, but so it has been for so many years. Elizabeth remembers to take stock in her treasures of the heart (as Henry counts his gold, the net amount the security of the realm), and she prays (as Lady Margaret always has) that God will continue to grant them his favour.

She’s caught something of his fears these days, it seems. It’s winter again and the chill of ice is in the air and she can’t put the blue of mourning aside yet. She hopes instead for spring.

She prays.


End file.
